Bankruptcy Fees in the Trump Budget

Thanks a tweet to the sharp-eyed Drew Dawson at the University of Miami, I saw this article in Politico that among the surprises in Trump's budget is an increase in bankruptcy filing fees (see item 5). Well, this seemed important to those of us in the bankruptcy world so I thought I would check it out. It proved surprisingly more difficult in this day and age than one would think to get a PDF copy of the Trump budget outline, but I finally found one. I am not sure the characterization of an increase in "bankruptcy filing fees" is entirely accurate.

Above is a screenshot from p. 30 of the document (clicking on it should bring up a full-sized image in a popup window). Keep in mind this is an outline of the underlying budget document. What appears to be proposed in an increase in the quarterly U.S. Trustee fee for chapter 11 filers and not a general increase in all bankruptcy filing fees or even the chapter 11 filing fee. Of course, the paragraph does characterize it as an increase in bankruptcy filing fees so maybe there is such a broad increase in the budget itself.

Does anybody know for certain?

Comments

[keith lundin]

You can bet on it. The U.S. Trustee Trust Fund runs dry and goes red by close to $70 million in 2017 because the UST asked for the same $230 million budget that they got when there were twice as many cases. With filings at 800k, the portion of filing fees the UST gets won't fund their 1300 authorized positions and they have to raise filing fees, quarterly fees or both to keep from having to hit general revenues (not going to happen). Somebody has to ask, what does the UST do that justifies charging debtors $230 million to administer half as many cases? Why not leave filing fees where they are and reconfigure the UST to match its much diminished caseload?